The Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark is selling its West Side club to Team Academy, a charter school that will demolish the club and build a new school building.Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

The gateway to Newark’s Fairmount neighborhood is filled with barren tracts of land and empty buildings. Blocks away it doesn’t fare much better with another large parcel fenced off where kids once played for more than 50 years.

Spaces like this in the West Ward are so rare that it propelled community leaders and city officials to map out a development plan for the economic, recreation and social needs of the community.

On paper, it looks good. Getting it to work hasn’t gone so well.

The problem — property owners have other ideas.

They sell, leaving the neighborhood upset.

"These private entities have not listened to me or consulted with me to do what the community wants," said West Ward Councilman Ronald Rice Jr. "The community has not seen them as community friendly to provide things we need."

He’s talking about Provision of Promise Ministries, a Newark church on Littleton Avenue and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Newark.

Residents want retail businesses on the church land, but that’s not possible because the church sold it to Public Service Electric and Gas for $7.5 million for a switching station the utility plans to build.

Vivian Fraser, executive director of the Urban League of Essex County, said she is concerned about the PSEG project and disturbed the church agreed to sell knowing what the community wants.

"It’s distressing. It’s just sad," said Fraser, who was heavily involved in the development plan.

Provision of Promise has closed and no one could be reached for comment.

The Provision of Promise Church in Newark sold its property to Public Service Electric & Gas, which has plans to build a switching station on the site. Barry Carter/The Star-Ledger

Down the street, residents long for recreation on land behind the chain-link fence. That’s where the West Side unit of the Boys and Girls Club was always jammed with kids until administrators closed it in 2008. Now they’re selling it to Team Academy, a charter school that plans to demolish the club and build a new school.

"The Boys and Girls Clubs is not in a position to reopen that club," said Tom Vallen, a trustee for the youth agency. "In our judgment this sale to Team is the best opportunity to bring something positive to that community."

Ben Cope, a Team spokesman, said the school understands residents allegiance to the club, so they plan to meet with them to talk about their concerns. Cope declined to discuss the purchase price, but he expects the deal to be closed soon.

"It’s a travesty what we’ve allowed to happen as a community," said resident Kim Gilchrist. "We have the power and we have not used it for what we want."

PSEG will be looking for community support tonight when it explains the project to residents during a meeting at Thirteenth Avenue School. In addition to the purchase price, residents will learn that PSE&G is spending an extra $4.5 million to demolish the church and environmentally remediate the site. They’ll construct a 30-foot wall and landscape the street with trees.

Officials say the switching station is needed to deliver power safely to households and businesses if other facilities go down during storms like Hurricane Sandy.

"We need to have different pathways to provide service," said PSEG spokeswoman Karen Johnson. "If one pathway gets shut down, we can bring electricity from another way to keep the lights on."

As the process plays out, another player has emerged. Main Street Development Company of Jersey City says it can do what residents want. At community meetings, they’ve said they’ve tried for the past year to make offers on both properties and were not successful. Dwight Walker and Michelangelo Russo of Main Street have suggested to residents that they could be the designated developer if the city declares the area in need of redevelopment.

Some residents are listening. The city isn’t and doesn’t think the developers can do what they say.

In the meantime, the community has a neighborhood plan that’s not working so well.